NewYorke.org

You know they say that women who are pregnant are selfish. I think it's somewhat true. I've had the same experience twice in the past week... It wasn't until the second time, that I understood why. I'll explain.

So the other day, I was walking down the hall at the school where I work, headed on an errand. I saw this beautiful baby down the hall and watched as everyone gathered around oogleing over the baby. My mind drifted to my own little one and my/our excitement over seeing her/him on sonogram and then into the future in my own dreamy little maternal land. I paused for a moment to get a better look, walked past the crowd, and then kept going. Beautiful baby. It was fun to watch everyone so captivated. As I walked past, someone said, "Don't you want to hold him." Uhh, Ya, of course I do. The thought hadn't occurred to me, but now that you mention it, I'd love to.

Well, today our friends brought over their one month old baby. I watched as my friend held her small baby, noticing the baby's posture, and her mother's comfort with holding her. It was quite a sweet view. It was nice to watch their comfortable unity. I just gazed on as we chatted about work, school, church, etc all the while with my hand gently warming my belly. My pants are getting just tight enough to be uncomfortable. It feels good to have by hand on my abdomen. Introspective. In a not so obvious way. After about an hour, my friend said, "Do you want to hold her?" Uh, ya, sure. (How come I didn't think of that?) She is a nurse. I think she assumed that I am not incredibly comfortable around infants. That's pretty common. But, I thought, "I'm not uncomfortable. But I normally would have thought of it. Huh, that's weird. What's that about?"

Then it occurred to me. I'm baby hungry all right. I oogle at every baby around. But I guess I'm baby hungry in a more self-centered sort of way. I don't want anybody else's baby. I just want my own. My body's too busy to feel the desire to take on extras. What an interesting experience. It's just funny that it happened twice in a week's time.

My goodness. In the course of 2 months, the little one has grown from a 2 mm yolk sac (see Valentine's photo), to a 4 mm embryo with a heartbeat just 4 days later, to a very active 2.2 cm embryo with a head, body, and limbs a month later, and now 2 months from Valentines (4-15-05) the little one is 8 cm has a head, developed arms, legs, spine, and hands (with all the fingers.) That's 40 times the original size in 2 months flat!!! My heck! She was kicking her little legs and sucking her thumb. I think it's amazing how all of those cells somehow know what organ to become. I realize it's biochemical, but that's really amazing.

Makes me realize why I've been so sick. It must take a lot of chemicals (hormones) to keep the whole process working right. All those hormones make me sick as a dog, but that's ok, I've lived quite a while and can take a little abuse. The baby on the other hand needs everything just right. It takes a lot of energy to keep everything going.

At our next 4-week checkup we should find out the gender. We should be able to see her inner organs and such as well. That'll be cool. I probably really will be showing by then.

Now you can even see a fully-developed hand, fingers and all! The baby is now 8 cm from head to rump.

Well, we have a three-bedroom house. The master bedroom is obviously spoken for. One room in the front of the house became the defacto storage room. Who has time to unpack? As for the other room, Cosmo (our ferret) has long since claimed it as his own. Obviously there was a need to make a few changes.

Cosmo doesn't do well locked in the cage all day. Currently, he mainly stays in the cage excepting for the few hours each day he's out playing with us. The trouble is, he's quite rambunctious during playtime because he's been cooped up all day. We had, at one point, implemented a failed plan to let him roam the house all day. For the most part it went well, except for the fact that he somehow forgot his potty-training. That was the end of that little experiment.

Upstairs we also have a common area that we've been using as our office. It's been highly under-used, mostly because we don't want to go upstairs. We decided to move one of the computers downstairs and combine the office with the library in what is meant to be the dining room. It's worked out great.

We decided Cosmo could have the common area as his play area. Of course, being a ferret, he like to dig and scratch. We feared this would mean disaster for the carpet in that area. Our best solution (without ripping out the carpet) was to lay Pergo-style glue-free flooring. In all, it took us about three half-Saturdays to get it in.

Tonight we moved Cosmo in. He seems to love it. He finally has his toys all in one place again. He spent all night running around the room, playing with his toys, and climbing through his tubes. He's a happy fellow.

We can now start the seemingly gigantic task of preparing the other two rooms as the nursery and guest room.

It's crazy.

I wore a pair of pants two days ago and a skirt yesterday, both of which are probably the only items in my wardrobe that fit into my waistline. Well, my goodness, suddenly within the last three days my waistline began expanding out the front. I'm not gonna be able to wear those for a while. I've been keeping an eye out for forever for changes. It's like I'm a teenager... "hmmm what's changed this week". But no stomach rounding until now. It's cute. Now, it won't be noticible to the rest of the world for a while now, but it's nice to know things are going ok.

Dave is worried that I might get self-conscience. Nah. Just evidence that things are going well. We have that book "What to expect.." I look just like the picture for the end of 3 months. It's just amazing how suddenly it started.